Hi all.

I am pretty new to RFID arena. I am new to uc arena as well, if you
come down to it. I have done a bit of pic, and I like it. If I had to
stick to my hobbyist projects, I would have continued with pic ucs.

THE SITUATION
Unfortunately, now I must assist in some considerable amount of
development for RFID gadgets, a part of which is devoted to building
replacements for the commercial RFID readers that came from the
vendors.

Those readers don't allow us to read the entire byte string from the
cards, and allow some sort of communication with pc through an api
(from vendor). But the whole developing environment is extremely poor,
and further customizations are very hard to make. We did think of
sniffing from the com port (which is what the reader uses to talk to
the pc) and reverse engineer the data structure of the byte string in
the smart cards, but it would not be reliable.

We have long term goals, and for the kind of things we plan to do, we
would like to have the power to customize, and in general building a
local eco system for RFID development seems like a fun thing to do.

THE CONFUSION
So the trouble is, do I stick to PIC's or do I switch to Atmel (AVR's)?

The family of solutions and technologies for RFID from Microchip seems
to be poor (but then, I am very new and might be mising a trick
somewhere), plus Atmel was strongly recommended in practically all of
the forums/pages I have browsed so far. But all of these differences
are not relevant because they were directed towards amateur concerns
and I am trying to choose for an RFID stack.

THE QUESTION
1) So what should I go for? rfPIC? PIC? AVR? And why? Which chips are
good for what? If someone could give some sort of overview, it would
be most helpful.

2) I have read only one book so far, but it was absolutely useless. If
someone could give point me towards a reading list (preferably
documents, datasheets and walk-throughs) or just guide me in going
about this RFID business, I'll be eternally grateful to him and I
promise to name my first gadget after him. ;)

3) Any general comments or suggestions?

Thanks in advance.
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